Rob Thurman's Blog Timeshare: Cheap & Filthy [Part 1]
Correction: Rented for AAA Meeting
Astoundingly Annoying Anonymous
(free coffee and donuts)
Misha: New York was a good place to hide. Lots of people, but I still preferred hiding in small towns. Bad guys…ummm…badder guys than Stefan and me were easier to spot and doing a background check on everyone including the town pet moose, Mickey…Mickey the Moose—I named him. That wasn't exactly pertinent to the situation, but I did have a file on him regarding him kicking an overweight mailman the next town over and destroying twenty-five garbage cans in search of food that tasted better than grass. It seemed logical to me. I'd rather have a Big Mac than a mouthful of chlorophyll.
But New York…it'd take a long, long time to get a background check, picture, proof of birth and fingerprints of everyone there.
I had no idea why Stefan had dropped me in this impossible and annoying place, but he said it was for his own good. Not my own good, I just this moment recalled, but his own good. Stefan, as older brothers went, was the best, but having been an ex-member of the Russian Mafiya he often did what had to be done.
When he slammed the door behind me and told me he'd be back to pick me up in about two hours, I shrugged. Stefan knew I could protect myself, but he was a worrier. He'd be back sooner with an explanation and probably several bags of greasy food as an apology …at least I thought so until I heard a padlock snick into place outside the door. Stefan's own good didn't seem to have my own good traveling along with it.
Craptastic.
I'd only heard that word recently. I liked it. Craptastic. It was better than craporama. Or fuck me running. I liked fuck me running, but I hadn't figured out exactly what it meant yet and the mental picture wasn't helping me any.
I heard a mumble and flicked on the lights to the mostly empty small building and saw a figure curled on the floor, handcuffed, ankles duct-taped together, gagged…with a sock…a smelly sock even from several feet away that was easy to tell and was ninety-seven percent unconscious.
Approximately.
I walked closer. He…and it was a he, I sighed…small towns are great, but short on women my age. He was about twenty-four and fifteen days old. He had straight black hair that hung over his face, his skin was unnaturally pale, and he was dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt that said King of the Fucking Universe, and black combat boots. There was a black leather jacket draped over a folding chair near his feet. And in and underneath the jacket was a double holster with a Glock 40 and a Desert Eagle .50. I didn't care about guns, but I knew about them.
I knew about everything.
That sounded arrogant, but it wasn't. I really did.
In the jacket I could see the jagged edges of four matte black combat knives and two more knives of the switchblade kind. And that summed up the psych profile—I'd been doing them since I was five. Two seconds maximum. This guy…half a second was enough.
Diagnosis via T-shirt, all black clothes stemming from parental issues, over-compensation due to small genitalia size evidenced by a large size in weapons, a T-shirt announcing his 'bad-ass' arrogance to the world equaled low self-esteem which resulted in easily triggered aggression to hide said low self-esteem. The need of weapons of any sort suggested a dangerous occupation, confidence in his fighting skills as evidenced by the wear and tear on them, probably also requiring their use by, again, the hostility-inviting T-shirt, and….oh….lazy. He was lazy. The smelly sock.
I sighed again. It couldn't have been a girl that Stefan had locked me in with. No, it was a mass of issues, kinky bondage gear, and unwashed footwear.
I bent over and touched a finger to the skin of one of the hands cuffed behind him. I shook my head at the cuffs, but then went on to the more important.
He was drugged with an amount that would kill a normal human…I'm not a normal human, it made that easy to recognize…and he was not human either. Not true. He was about one-third human, but he wasn't my kind. I was about ten percent human, although my first cell had started out fully human. Those were the days, and then mitosis had gone and ruined it all.
I concentrated for a second, neutralizing the drug and its effects, and then he was wide awake and not happy. He glared at me as he shimmered with a silver streaked, dark gray and black light and disappeared. He reappeared across the room without the handcuffs, duct tape or sock…or any of his clothes that were in a pile at my feet.
"Cool trick." I'd been wrong. Despite the overly large guns, he was average sized. I was not. Stefan once was shaving and caught a glance at me getting out of the shower in our one bathroom and said if the assassin thing didn't work out for me, that I had porn star in my future.
I bent down and held up the leopard spotted furry handcuffs. "You want these or maybe your shirt and pants instead?"
To Be Continued…
